GOP Takes a Page from Bettie

By Baxter

The blogosphere must be simply saturated with titters, grins and gossip since the Republican National Committee was caught sending its young donor prospects to a West Hollywood bondage club. We cats will not try to pile on, although we're mighty tempted.

We'd rather focus instead on Michael Steele — the hapless RNC chairman, who we can't help but notice has been conspicuously silent on Bondagegate.

First, we don't believe that he wasn't there — that he wasn't one of the attendees on whom the Committee dropped a cool $2,000 to entertain at the club. But for the moment, we're more interested in a different set of numbers: specifically, the National Journal's "political insiders poll."

Seventy-one percent of GOP pooh-bahs surveyed by the Journal said that Steele was a liability to the party. Only 20 percent called him an asset. A pretty bad take on Mr. Steele's leadership, no? But as Beltway pundits have observed, it's almost as impossible to take out a sitting RNC chair as it is to cashier a Pope.

It seems to us cats that the GOP insiders are playing a dangerous game. If Republicans end up doing as well in the midterms as they think they will, they'll be stuck with Steele into the 2012 Presidential cycle. But the only way to get rid of him is to fail to meet electoral expectations this November — which would not be good for the party. A conundrum, indeed.

We cats PURR at that thought. However, we fail to understand why some uber-wealthy Republican doesn't just throw a ton of money at Steele to take a job somewhere else and bow out gracefully. The problem? Since the party is controlled by wingnuts now, they'd just install another wacko to take his place.

We cats PURR again.